Вайикра 19:27 Комментарий: Tze'enah Ure'enah, Rashi, Ibn Ezra & Sforno

“You shall not round off the side-growth on your head, or destroy the sidegrowth of your beard” [19:27]. You shall not cut off the corners or the front with a cutting implement, since the Holy One gave a beard so that he should be different from a woman. That is to say, one should know what is a woman or what is a man. When a person cuts off his beard, he wants to change the creation of the Holy One who identified a man with a beard.¹⁸Bahya, Leviticus, 19:27.

לא תקיפו פאת ראשכם YE SHALL NOT ROUND THE CORNERS OF YOUR HEAD — This refers to one who makes his temples exactly like (as hairless as) the back of his ears and his forehead (cf. Rashi on Makkot 20b, ד״ה המשוה צדעיו) by removing the hair on his temples, so that the lower edge of the hair that surrounds his head (i. e. his skull, because we are not concerned with ‎hair at the back of the neck) forms a complete circle, since above the back of his ears the roots of his hair are situated much higher than his temples (and it is thus only the temples which prevent an uninterrupted circular line going round his skull). (Cf. Makkot 20b).

At this point Scripture mentions Do not cut off the hair on the corners of your head because this too was the practice of the other nations; and we must separate ourselves from them. Moreover, the hair on the head and the beard were created for beauty, and it is inappropriate to destroy it. Some people suggest that this verse precedes Do not make any incision in your flesh because it was a sign of mourning to cut off the hair on the corners of the head, or on the corners of the beard.

פאת זקנך [NEITHER SHALT THOU MAR] THE CORNERS OF THY BEARD — i. e. the tip of the beard and its sides, these making together five corners: two on each cheek, above near the head (the temples) — where it (the cheek) is broad and has therefore two corners (thus four on the two sides) and one at the bottom, on the chin, on that spot where is the junction of the two cheeks (Shevuot 3a; cf. also Sifra, Kedoshim, Chapter 6 3; Makkot 20a and Rashi on Shevuot 3a: ועל הזקן ‎‎‏ (ד"ה